How sensitivity to provocation shapes encoding and interpretation of ambivalent scenes in an eye tracking study

ABSTRACT

Hostility bias is based on the attribution of intentionality, personality traits such as trait anger and sensitivity to provocation (SP), as well as gender. Eye-tracking studies have shown that, prior to the interpretation of everyday social encounters, people might pay attention to hostile and non-hostile cues differently depending on trait anger; however, little is known about the encoding patterns of individuals sensitive to provocation. We conducted two studies, one of which was on interpretation and the other on encoding. Study 1 (N = 75) found that people low in SP gazed significantly longer at non-hostile cues than at hostile cues. Study 2 (N = 197, 84 men) revealed a significant interaction for judgment of intentionality in ambiguous scenes between gender and both SP and trait-anger; SP, trait anger and intentionality were negatively related in females, whereas in males they were positively related, although the relationships themselves (simple effects) were non-significant.     

Effect of color on judgments of food aroma and flavour intensity in young and elderly adults

The hypothesis was tested that subjects' judgments of food aroma and flavour strength will be increasingly influenced by food color as the chemosensory differences between foods become less apparent. Elderly (n = 24) and young (n = 22) adults were presented with pairs of food samples and instructed to indicate which sample had the more intense aroma or flavor. The chemosensory discriminations varied in difficulty, and the color of the food pairs was also manipulated so that either they were similarly colored, or the color strength differed so that it was either positively or inversely correlated with flavour strength. Overall, the results failed to support the hypothesis that color alters the perceived intensity of the food aroma or flavor. There was a weak trend toward a greater number of errors among sample pairs that varied in color, especially when color strength was inversely related to flavor strength. Elderly and young adult groups did not differ in chemosensory ability or in their responses to food color differences, although the elderly adults were significantly more certain of the accuracy of their chemosensory judgments.     

Beyond Single-Mindedness: A Figure-Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences

A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists.     

Perceptual fluency effects in judgments of creativity and beauty: creative objects are perceived fluently yet they are visually complex

ABSTRACT

Perceptual fluency typically has a positive influence on aesthetic evaluations of beauty, but few studies have examined its influence on creativity evaluations. Creativity has two facets, originality and quality. If creativity judgments involve estimating product originality, such judgments may be associated with perceptual disfluency, while product quality may be associated with perceptual fluency. We examined the relationship between perceptual fluency and judgments of creativity and beauty across seven experiments. Creativity judgments were affected by most perceptual fluencysources. We observed a highly-fluent-is-beautiful-and-creative relation when testing repeated exposure and figure-ground contrast. Prototypicality displayed a high-fluency–is-beautiful relation, with creativity judgments unaffected. Visual complexity displayed a consistent disfluent-is-creative effect, with mixed results for beauty. For creativity (but not beauty) evaluations, increased saliency of visual complexity led to discounting fluent-is-creative effects, supporting the hypothesis that there are at least two fluency pathways to creativity judgments that take both originality and quality into account.     

The Ineliminability of Epistemic Rationality*

Many writers have recently urged that the epistemic rationality of beliefs can depend on broadly pragmatic (as opposed to truth-directed) factors. Taken to an extreme, this line of thought leads to a view on which there is no such thing as a distinctive epistemic form of rationality. A series of papers by Susanna Rinard develops the view that something like our traditional notion of pragmatic rationality is all that is needed to account for the rationality of beliefs. This approach has undeniable attractions. But examining different versions of the approach uncovers problems. The problems help reveal why epistemic rationality is an indispensable part of understanding rationality—not only of beliefs, but of actions. We may or may not end up wanting to make a place, in our theories of epistemic rationality, for factors such as the practical or moral consequences of having beliefs. But a purely pragmatic notion of rationality—one that’s stripped of any component of distinctively epistemic evaluation—cannot do all the work that we need done.     

Suicide Prevention in Australian Aboriginal Communities: A Review of Past and Present Programs

A review of Aboriginal suicide prevention programs were conducted to highlight promising projects and strategies. A content analysis of gray literature was conducted to identify interventions reported to have an impact in reducing suicidal rates and behaviors. Most programs targeted the whole community and were delivered through workshops, cultural activities, or creative outlets. Curriculums included suicide risk and protective factors, warning signs, and mental health. Many programs were poorly documented and evaluations did not include suicidal outcomes. Most evaluations considered process variables. Results from available outcome evaluations suggest that employing a whole of community approach and focusing on connectedness, belongingness and cultural heritage may be of benefit. Despite the challenges, there is a clear need to evaluate outcomes if prevention is to be progressed.     

The Suicidal Ideation Attributes Scale (SIDAS): Community‐Based Validation Study of a New Scale for the Measurement of Suicidal Ideation

While suicide prevention efforts are increasingly being delivered using technology, no scales have been developed specifically for web‐based use. The Suicidal Ideation Attributes Scale (SIDAS) was developed and validated as a brief, web‐based measure for severity of suicidal ideation, using an online survey of Australian adults (n = 1,352). The SIDAS demonstrated high internal consistency and good convergent validity. Frequency and controllability of thoughts were more strongly associated with suicide plans and attempts than other attributes assessed. Scores ≥ 21 indicated high risk of suicide behavior. The SIDAS appears to be a valid web‐based measure for severity of suicidal ideation.     

Semantic effects in lexical access: Evidence from single-word naming

Cognitive psychologists have not devoted much attention to semantic and emotional effects early in word recognition, assuming instead that such effects are primarily post-perceptual. Some evidence of such early effects does exist, but it relies exclusively on a less-than-ideal experimental task, the lexical decision task. In the current study, participants heard words over headphones and repeated them into a microphone as quickly as possible (single-word naming). The Danger and Usefulness of word referents were significantly related to naming times, independent of effects such as word length, familiarity, onset characteristics, stress, neighbourhood density, and concreteness. Results are discussed in terms of the adaptive benefit of making quick classifications along these dimensions, and against a backdrop of evidence from several widely divergent areas of research.